


they yearn for what they fear

by numenvunai



Category: GreedFall (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Blow Jobs, Fix-It, In a Loose Sense, M/M, Terminal Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:49:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29625903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numenvunai/pseuds/numenvunai
Summary: If only the prince’s ailing son hadn’t fucked the minister ratifying the line of succession, it could have been possible to pretend. But the doors swallowed the man called de Sardet, weights too great to open again for him, and Constantin knew.Heir presumptive to the Prince d’Orsay, so named by His Majesty on this eve of the twenty-first of June, 1637. Witnessed by M. Esther-Chrétienne Bretéau.…Constantin is dying, and de Sardet appears, wearing a long-dead name.
Relationships: Constantin d'Orsay/De Sardet
Kudos: 4





	they yearn for what they fear

Before this disease takes Constantin’s senses, his father’s underestimation may have will enough to sober them first.

He is right to see Constantin’s naivety to power. Even with what great wobbles his family’s heads take as they are struck, it is his father’s hands on the crown that halt its tumble. The prince’s blood runs in the colors of his banner – unfortunate that his own son isn’t given to such natural rule. Constantin was hopeless as an heir, even under the most slippery-handed tutelage.

The Prince d’Orsay has ensured through no intent of his own, however, that his dear boy is long-served in filial warfare. To run a field on the splinters of cannon fire, broken limbs his volleying fodder – by the mercies of the prince, he is a general. But he is sick, and he is dying.

Constantin can shed his blood on the threshold, carrying it through the halls and to the foot of the throne. He can cough entrails into his father’s face, but it does not matter. The Prince d’Orsay has already buried him.

…

 _House de Sardet._ Written in a tight hand, with forced flourish. What influence could be left of the necrotized branch of his family to draw living flesh into its resurrection? It isn’t within Constantin to envision a sycophant, nor could that be a man his father would entertain. Few enough of the higher echelons curb ambitions, but to successfully rouge the corpse of nobility and walk on its arm is an act of survival. He is too tired to find an enemy in that desperation, one that evokes classic laws of justice for the nameless, the fatally impoverished.

Perhaps de Sardet is a fair man, one he could have known in time. It’s altogether possible that decency inspires him to free Constantin at first licks of the punishment flames, rather than when he still prayed to heaven.

 _Laurent_. He came two days prior on a draft horse, a fresh cloak on his back as he hides in the supper shadow of the estate – unassuming. But the crass fiction to accompany him! A young to-be _conseiller_ the new constant in his father’s ear, so profuse in talent as to pardon his indeterminate birth. If only the prince’s ailing son hadn’t fucked the minister ratifying the line of succession, it could have been possible to pretend. But the doors swallowed the man called de Sardet, weights too great to open again for him, and Constantin knew.

 _Heir presumptive to the Prince d’Orsay_ , _so named by His Majesty on this eve of the twenty-first of June, 1637. Witnessed by M. Esther-Chrétienne Bretéau._

…

There is a mark on de Sardet’s face.

Laurent appears only in profile before Constantin. In company, he angles it purposely, in such gentle manipulation polite eyes could hardly reach it. Here, from the east side’s reading room, the view is of him canted above his father’s writing desk, ass raised for Constantin’s ancestors. He imagines fucking de Sardet in the crowd of portraits, his semen spilling over papers as their sounds echo in all the spaces that Constantin is slowly excised from.

…

It’s near the stables where de Sardet first sees him.

Constantin is picking acceptable hay straws for Henri when Laurent takes his mount to their side. Henri lifts his head from Constantin’s hand to watch as de Sardet slips onto the wet grounds, boots slurping from the earth to paint mud on his breeches. Constantin takes his unsubtle fix of him, how quickly his greeting is poisoned by realization – and the guilt that falls over Laurent, hot like an open wound, is enough to sicken Constantin. He bares his teeth around the promise that open sympathy is the straightest path to the grave.

…

Constantin receives a letter from de Sardet.

It’s a moody autumn, and Constantin is properly despondent to accompany it. He cannot help but brighten some at the drama of the delivery, so hurried across the halls. Constantin considers reading it aloud as he takes his prescribed walk. He would be drenched, and the paper would soak through so the ink ran in tears.

Constantin is too tired to take the walks anymore. He opens the letter at his desk. He still stains his fingers.

…

There are many months of winter. Laurent stays.

…

His cock is a glory.

Spit-slick and hot with blood, de Sardet moves heavy in him like the Gascony wines. Constantin feels the sight of himself in the hands on his throat, their flexes with the motions of his hips. The air that runs his nose is like fire.

Laurent’s attention in these moments is singular. He presses into the curves of Constantin’s wet bow, rides a path over its fine hairs. His thumb breaches Constantin’s mouth to tug on its rim, stretching it to the point of pain. Constantin nearly chokes from the shudder that runs his body, and the cock head catches in his throat.

Laurent tilts Constantin up to share his gaze. Eye to eye, the bones in his knees shifting strangely against the ground, Constantin digs shaking fingers into Laurent’s thighs and there, yes. He fucks more and Constantin breathes.

…

Laurent kisses him in the greenhouse.

Constantin revels in the romanticism of shattered afternoon light, the aromatics of the herbs joining in the taste. It is a kiss of sipping tea, of young socialites testing their lust against rigid sexual proclivities. It nearly makes Constantin laugh.

It is also a kiss given to Constantin with a prick in his ass. He smiles and feels fond, instead.

…

New Serene is waiting for them.

It’s fine, Constantin thinks, to offer a son his honeymoon when his lover sees so much of it is taken under your roof. It could be more natural still to wish he have his death elsewhere, beneath the bowed, sweet head of the new crown. Constantin would be the widow, and he would have Laurent dressed in proper mourning clothes, beautifully pure, a figure for cathedral walls.

He will not go for the lie he might be saved.

…

We have to try, says de Sardet.

Constantin hates him for some things. He is callous in his utter sincerity. de Sardet reaches for hopes already blackened in Constantin’s mantle, and the ashes are too beautiful in Laurent’s hands to return them. He goes.

His dreams have grown peaceful. He is moved like on a river, without body. When he feels his weight again, he knows something has woken him, a force that must be unnatural.

Laurent. And the healer woman, she looks at him with naked contempt. For his life.

He falls, laughing, in the final relief of a last gunshot over a field of bodies. Clouded voices thin and melt into his own. There are blinks of light between hours of darkness, a buoy as he waits to end the night.

…

The world opens again on a tree. Constantin lays against it, and against Laurent, its grain weaved in the pattern of his mark. He imagines its roots growing over them.

**Author's Note:**

> constantin makes uncharitable assumptions but stops being an ass just soon enough, and they fuck: a tale of two bougie boys


End file.
